Welcome to “Harmony of the Spheres”! a distributed art show and performance by Amy Lynn Freeman and anyone else who cares to participate:)

The idea of the “Harmony of the Spheres” - that there is an inherent harmony, or sense of rightness, that over-rides our daily experiences of the exact opposite!, is a theme that has been popular for many hundreds of years, going back to Kepler’s “Musica Universalis” and including many contemporary artists such as Paul McCartney and Coldplay.  For a more general discussion of the history, check out this great article from Wikiepedia at:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musica_universalis.

My music composition is inspired by Terry Riley’s “In C” for orchestra https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_C

I was introduced to this piece at a class on using technology to enable distributed music performance at Stanford’s Center for Center for Computer Research and Acoustics at https://ccrma.stanford.edu/home.  I have been experimenting with distributed performance ever since, most significantly by transitioning my traditional piano studio to an online operation during the Covid pandemic.  I have LOTS of upcoming projects in this space, so if you are and artist or musician interested in collaborating please get in touch!

This musical composition has an A, B and C Section, each represented by a third of the painting.  And beyond that, I leave it up to the audience to tell me what you see:)

The full painting is a set of three 24” x 24” oil on canvas paintings, one for each section of the musical composition.  There is a secret code hidden in the patterns of each painting that contain the instructions needed to play the music on the piano, but once understood, on any instrument.

I wrote the piano piece for my students to play with and for learning improvisation and have used visual concepts in teaching music for years, but never to this extent before.  

So I’m excited - but also unsure - of how this will be received:)?  My husband Mike thinks no-one will get it and he may be right, but let’s see.  Who’s out there who can figure out my code?